Shidou has temporary fallen ill due a sudden outburst of Spirit energy coming from within him. The only way to keep his powers under control is to have the previous Spirits reseal their powers by kissing him. However, this new Shidou is a bit different than what Spirits remembered him as.

With the personality of a playboy, how will the Spirits be able make Shidou fall in love?

Itsuka Disaster revisits our characters yet again on more dates, spreading the joys of harem nonsense all around. While the events may be significant to the characters and the overall plot, the volume doesn’t really feel worthy of attention.

The cast of Date A Live is taking their physical measurements today and in order to prevent any suspicion, the Spirits have been ordered to keep their powers under control. Unfortunately, they aren’t the ones causing trouble. After breaking every school record by an incredible amount, Shidou appears unusual from having his Spirit powers leak out. And so, the only way to save him is for each Spirit to kiss him yet again. It’s a simple plot created all from a small foreshadowing back a couple of volumes ago, and having it suddenly brought up generated some interest. Despite that, the method in which it was carried out made the plot bland and uninteresting.

While the trouble of Shidou is the main problem, there are more hidden stuff happening behind the scenes. As we can see from their focused perspectives, Kurumi is getting closer to her goal, DEM is obviously plotting something, and the higher ups in Ratatoskr are getting feeling nervous by this situation. I could probably say that these “behind closed curtains” events are to prepare for the next volume as well as set up some more future foreshadowing. <Phantom> still remains as mysterious as ever, but we are given more information on Shidou’s and Mana’s hidden past, given a name to work with. Similarly to the previous volume, we may have gotten more information revealed to us, but it really doesn’t feel like something massive got revealed or the backstory is progressing any further. I’m ready for that one volume to just instantly connect all of the plot elements together, but until then, those key events remain scattered in the back of my head.

Like I said earlier, this plot was created from a haunting event in the fifth volume (took me a while to find it.) This volume tests Kotori and her ability to handle this situation and we can see subtle hints spread out through the story about Kotori’s increasing worry. Unfortunately, her worries are almost instantly brushed off due to the optimism of the Spirits, and they go off to save Shidou and other saving the world goodness.

This brings up a small issue I have with Date A Live. Personally, I don’t mind the Spirits’ personality, but right after their arc, it really feels as if they has this sort of “dumb” optimism to them that lacks any serious thought put behind it for future conflicts. Without consideration of the internal issues a character has, for some reason they are able to brush it off with a simple statement like “You’re my friend” and everything gets resolved in the end. Sure, it fits the whole corny and yet happy atmosphere, but the results at the end of the conflict between characters feels less impactful.

The illustrations’ main focus is to provide some nice fanservice as the majority of the drawings are of the Spirits. The quality remains refined and smooth, but more of an emphasis on making the characters appear cuter. A notable picture is the oddly inserted picture of Shidou…

Itsuka Disaster is a step down from the last two volumes by bring back the date rotation with each Spirit. Splitting the date portions between the vast amount of characters cuts down on development on their date, only having select people to be featured more than other. It’s the same situation about scenes taking place behind the plot of the story: information is disclosed but nothing is resolved yet.